Samsung unveils Galaxy Note 4, Note Edge phones; new Gear S wearable
NEW YORK — Samsung has been a little quiet as of late but not for much longer.
The Korean electronics giant unveiled on Wednesday at an event in New York's West Village its latest two smartphones and a wearable.
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Say hello to the Galaxy Note 4, the Note Edge, and the Gear S.
Samsung executive Gregory Lee said the company wants to "change what consumers expect in a smartphone, all over again."
Galaxy Note 4
The Galaxy Note 4 is a marked improvement from last year's Note 3. The design of the device is much stronger and lighter. The metal frame around the edge makes the device sturdier, but it still comes with a plastic backing.
The Note 4 comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chip, and a 5.7-inch high resolution AMOLED display, which sports a 30 percent bump in pixels-per-inch on the Note 3.
The battery life is far better, with Samsung executives claiming it charges up to its half-way point in just 30 minutes.
The rear camera sports a 16-megapixel camera with a sharper zoom, and the "selfie" front-facing camera lands in at 3.7-megapixels. As with other Samsung smartphones, it comes with expandable SD card storage.
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The Note 4 will land on AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular later this year.
Galaxy Note Edge
Samsung also paraded the Galaxy Note Edge, a breakthrough device for the company, with a curved touchscreen with an independent edge.
It is, in every way, the same as the Note 4, but lands with a sharp display running along the edge of the device. It's also slightly smaller at 5.6-inches, versus the larger Note 4 display.
Samsung executives said the device's edge, a single piece of glass, is a separate entity but looks and feels like a continuous curved screen. The beauty of the separate "edge" is that Note Edge owners can continue to work on what they're doing without being interrupted when a notification comes through, such as a tweet or a sports alert. If a phone call comes in as you're writing an email, you can reject it and carry on writing, without the call taking over your screen.
Developers will have access to the software development kit (SDK) to build apps for the edge display.
The Note Edge will land on the same carriers as the Note 4, excluding US Cellular.
Samsung Gear S
Meet the wearable that ties the Note 4 and the Note Edge to your own personal health and fitness.
The curved 2-inch display wearable is marketed as a smartphone on your wrist. It lands with 3G connectivity, GPS location tracking for running and working out, and can store up to 4GB of data, like music.
The Gear S runs the latest version of Tizen OS, the company's own mobile and wearable operating system. The rubber-type band lands with a heartrate sensor, and a range of more than 1,000 apps available to use.
The wearable's battery life will last about two days.